A Few Unusual Photos of the Night Sky

Comet NEAT

Comet NEAT is in bottom center between the trees

Cassiopeia during Leonid Meteor Shower

Notes On Feeling Fat

Notes On Feeling Fat

            I did something that took some nerve yesterday.  I looked at myself naked in a full length mirror.  Frontal and side view.  I’ve avoided doing it for years and I finally got tired of being such a coward and did the deed.  I looked.

            It was disturbing but also liberating.  I’m sixty five years old; age is happening to my body. I won't be one of those people who cling to youth with frantic denial. I want to enjoy being a cranky old man who groans and says "Fech!" Things could be much worse.  All the flab has settled around my mid-section, leaving my shoulders, arms and legs looking okay..  I weigh two

hundred and stand five foot eight.  I “carry my weight well”, so I’ve been told.  I’m not a waddling fire plug.  I’m more like a bear or a gorilla.  These creatures don’t have tapering waistlines.

        It’s the fault of the medications.  That’s what I tell myself.  The medicines changed my metabolism.  I got heavy after I started taking the medications for my leg neuropathy and ...all those other things.

Forget the compulsive bed-time eating, the appetite for Reese’s Pieces and

Nestle’s Crunch.  Never mind the yum yum indulgence of putting peanut butter on Ritz Crackers and tossing down half a roll.  I ride a bicycle every day, three sixty five.  I know, you hate me.  I also do a daily yoga practice.  I know, you hate me even more.

            It’s a case of good disciplines counteracting bad habits.

            I am a disciplined compulsive.  Is that a paradox?  Try living with it.

Is anyone else like this?  Is anyone locked in a struggle between the rational and irrational parts of themselves?  I’m killing myself while saving my life.  I’m a suicidal yogi health food candy addict.  

            I practice aerobic “spinning”.  I sweat hard and push myself until I’m panting .

            My treadmill test indicated that I am free of heart disease.

            How do I live with myself?

            Tolerantly.  Very tolerantly.

            Am I the only baby boomer with a past full of addictions and recoveries?

Am I the only sixty-something with chronic pain in at least two parts of my body?

Am I the only man who feels conned and imprisoned by the pharmaceutical companies because I have to take meds for blood pressure, depression and physical pain?  These meds have saved and restored my quality of life.  They’ve also made me a prisoner.

            I feel as if I’ve loaned out my body as a lab rat and everything will stay cool as long as I keep running on the treadmill.

            My belly’s been large for twenty years.  I’m a husky strong man.  What will body shame get me?  Nothing.  Avoiding my reflection in the mirror is absurd., I don’t know what I really look like.  Each gaze into my reflected image is so loaded with ingrained value judgments, fantasies and delusions that it’s pointless to obsess on my appearance.  I just don’t know and never will know what I look like.  Furthermore, I don’t look the same to any two people.  Nothing does!  So what the fuck?

            I’ve made a deal with my belly.  I talk to it.  Belly, I say, you are a part of me, you are a product of genetics, lifestyle and a thousand other factors.  You and I will have have to get along.  Let’s be friends.  It’s obvious you’re not going anywhere.

            So, belly, how ya doin’ today?  No pain?  That’s good.  Let’s go for a ride.

Hiway To The Skyway

Jack In The Box Love

How Do I Define My Work?

As I was setting up the pages for Tumblr, I was asked the following question in setting up my profile:
How Do You Define Your Work?

Holy Shirt!  What a question!  It caused me to pause....and pause...and in this manner some days went by...and I paused some more..  This is how I finally defined my work.

I work to express the beauty and majesty of the Universe.  I work to understand and to worship those Energies that are involved in its creation and continued existence.

I work to help those people who are involved in healing themselves from parental abuse, violence, ignorance or indifference.

I work to manifest images that evoke emotional truth and self-revelation. I work to revive atrophied faculties of mind and spirit that have been damaged by our culture.

I work to contribute my iota to the world of self-knowledge.

I write, play music and practice photography for people who want to be mirrored in their deepest selves, that they may better understand their confusions.

At the moment I can't bring any more cogent definition of my work that wouldn't involve writing fifty pages of boring junk.

Cries From The Heart

Lately I've been getting messages from people that I would term
"Cries From The Heart".  The French have a term for this: Cri de Coeur.   A Cri de coeur is deep, serious and without artifice.  It's the real thing.  I've gotten emails, facebook messages, texts, phone calls, cries from everywhere on Earth.  They are wails of desperation, despair.  In May I uttered such a cry to a few of my friends.  Perhaps that's why I'm getting these messages now.  People feel they can let down their guard.  I hear from strangers, from acquaintances and from friends.  It's as if our bodies are distilling our  experiences and allowing these feelings to percolate downward into the Earth.  "WE'RE IN TROUBLE!" is what I'm hearing. Well...what else is new?  We've been in trouble for some time now.  When Robin Williams died there was a collective outflow, as if a giant balloon had been punctured. PSHEEEEWWW!  Suddenly the world had lost an important shade of color.  Gone!  Our palette was subtly impoverished.  I found myself thinking, "If he could get to such a state, then ANYONE might find themselves so distressed that they start looking for a way out."
Fortunately, I survived my May crisis but I will admit that it left me frightened.  It was ungodly painful!  I don't want to go through that again.  I don't want anyone to go through such an ordeal. Perhaps it was a true mid-life crisis, just a little late.  I didn't have the crisis about getting old in my fifties.  But at 65, whammo!  I write this because I think it's time to be honest.   Hang on tight, my friends.  We live in "interesting times" as the Chinese curse has it.  "May you live in interesting times" is an oriental malediction.
It's like saying "may you be witness to much war, famine and suffering." 
  We have all of that and we are forced to be witness because we live in a global information network where the news is even pumped through men's room urinals. It's important that we help one another, any way that we can. Expect to feel confused. Reach out when the confusion gets overwhelming. Reach out, anyway.

Compassion Found Dead In House Of Reps

 

            Early this morning Compassion was found dead on the floor of the House of Representatives.  An employee of the Capitol’s maintenance staff, Dizzy Tilton, found the body as he was sweeping debris down the center aisle.
          “I seen it comin’ for a long time.  It wasn't no shock." said Mr. Tilton, who has worked in the House for thirty seven years.  

            The body of Compassion was sprawled across a large number of  seats in the House Chamber.  Of course, Compassion was well known for her immortal hits such as “Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,” and “I Seen the Devil And It’s You,”. An anonymous source in law enforcement told this reporter that as many as fifty knives were used in the killing.  The FBI and the Secret Service say they have no suspects at this time, but a thorough investigation will be mounted as soon as a committee is formed to decide who will lead the inquiry.

            “There’s plenty of evidence”, said Special Agent Dawn Zerle-Light, 

“There are fingerprints on top of fingerprints.  Seems like everybody 

wanted Compassion out of the way.  The timing is suspicious, I must say.  

Only last week, Wisdom was blown to pieces in the Senate. Officials in 

Congress are trying to pin the crime on lobbyists. Of course the 

investigation won’t start until the end of the current filibuster.”